updated 05:14 am EST, Thu February 7, 2013

OUYA to get annual hardware refreshes

Indy console maker OUYA has said that it plans to roll out a new console on an annual basis, much like many mobile handset makers do with their flagship models, reports Engadget. The revelation follows Nvidia's announcement that Tegra 4 devices will be shipping soon, while the OUYA console will begin shipping in March with the older Tegra 3 chipset. As with most mobile games, however, OUYA promises that new titles will be backwards-compatible previous generations.

"Our strategy is very much similar to the mobile strategy," OUYA CEO Julie Uhrman told Engadget. "There will be a new OUYA every year. There will be an OUYA 2 and an OUYA 3," she elaborated. "We'll take advantage of faster, better processors, take advantage of prices falling. So if we can get more than 8GB of Flash in our box, we will."

OUYA, which started life as a high-profile Kickstarter success story, recently shipped its developer consoles on time. It is powered by a Tegra 3 quad-core CPU clocked at 1.6GHz, will 12 CUDA GPUs and has 1GB of system RAM along with 8GB of onboard storage. Early backers are expected to start receiving their consoles in March, while news emerged that it will appear in retail stores this June for $100 including one controller - extra controllers will cost $50 each.